The Sacred Band

by David Anthony Durham

  Unless …

  “You know my name,” he began, his voice not nearly loud enough. He raised it. “I should declare it with my own lips, though. I am Dariel Akaran, third child of Leodan Akaran, who was the twenty-first ruler of Acacia. I wear this mark that says Rhuin Fá, but I will answer to that name only if you decide it belongs to me. I want to explain—”

  The Antok speaker interrupted him. “How do you speak Auldek? If you are from Akaran lands, you would not speak it as you do, like it was your first tongue.”

  “I speak this way because I was meant to speak this way. Because I was destined to stand before you and say the things I’m saying. I spoke barely a word of this tongue when I arrived here, but I am not the same man as when I arrived here. I wear this face now. This mark. I speak this language, and the heart behind all these things has found the purpose it did not have before.”

  Dukish whispered something under his breath to his secretary. The man came forward with a hand stretched out to take the horn back.

  Dariel twisted away from him, holding the horn high and out of his reach. “You want to hear me speak? Then let me speak. Listen!”

  When he was sure they all were listening, he began again. He admitted that he had been born in the palace of Acacia. He was raised in privilege, with maids about him, nannies and servants and guards, with a father he loved and siblings beside him. “Most of you had similar things, didn’t you? At least parents and siblings you loved,” he said, “and a place you knew as home. I know now that each one of you had those things taken from you. I know now that it was my family that sold you, and I know now how horrible a crime that was. I did not know it then. As you were children, so was I; as you learned what life held for you here, so did I learn hardship. I won’t say it’s equal to yours, but hear me.”

  He knew he was already talking too much, losing some of them, but he wanted them to know him. What else did he have but words? The more they heard his voice, the more they would recognize it. He described the first invasion of his childhood, Hanish Mein coming out of the north, his Numrek allies with him. He explained the betrayal of his guardian and how a giant of a man named Val became a second father to him. He spoke of his life as a raider and his war with the league, and of later reuniting with his siblings and of seeing his brother killed and of feeling himself uncomfortable in the skin of royalty regained. He talked about the years he had tried to find a way to live meaningfully, and said he had never felt he had until the strange events that brought him to Ushen Brae and shoved him under Tunnel’s arm and earned him the scratches Mór’s Shivith claws made on his cheek, and which led, eventually, to the Sky Watcher Nâ Gâmen showing him centuries of history and writing the rune he now wore on his forehead.

  “That is who I am,” he said. “That’s the journey that brought me here, but none of it matters at all if I cannot help you build the best nation you can here in Ushen Brae. That is the calling I was looking for but did not know how to find. I had always wondered what sense it made to be born in luxury and to lose it. To have a family and to lose it. To have a nation but to be taken from it. Now I know. Those are the steps in the life that brought me here to you. Because of that, I know not one of them was mistaken. Not one of them would I change, not since they led me here to you.”

  He let his gaze move around in silence. He looked not just at the clan representatives but at the crowds behind them. He touched on face after face, remembering things about them all as his eyes met theirs. That was when he understood why he knew them. He had dreamed them. Those dreams in which he had spoken to the people of Ushen Brae were not just dreams. They had really happened. He knew it, and he tried to make them know it as he gazed at them. Perhaps they already did, for they held their silence, waiting for him to go on.

  “Now that I’m here, I have to do something or my life will not be worth anything. So here is what I argue for: unity among you. Now is no time to forget the dream you’ve shared of being Free People. It’s no time to see differences. It’s madness to think that the souls and hearts of the Kern are any different from the souls and hearts of the Wrathic. Do you know now just how mad it is? In my country—I mean in the Known World. In our country back there.” He pointed toward the sea. “Back there, we are divided. You know that, don’t you? We are not one nation that acts together, that sent you to this land in some mutual agreement. Back there, we fight among ourselves. We have for centuries. We see difference everywhere. We see excuses to exclude, to suppress, to exploit. We always have.

  “I remember when I arrived in Falik for the first time. It wasn’t as if I had never seen the people of Balbara before, but being in among them hit me in the gut, in the eyes, in the ears. Everywhere. Black, black skin. Do you know it? Skin so dark that it looks, up close, like the only color skin could be. Compared to it, the weak brown that I am was embarrassing. And what, then, of the thin paper that is Meinish skin? What of the short stature of Vumu? The red hair and freckles of Aushenians? In the Known World we see all those differences. Seeing them, we’re afraid. When I was a child, I was told my people were the center of the world, and that all around, from white to black, were races who had not the right to rule that my people did. If I was not to be afraid of others, I had to rule them, suppress them. That was our mistake. Look now at yours.”

  He pushed out of the representatives’ circle and walked along before the front rows of the spectators. Standing before the gray skin and tusks of the Antoks, he said, “Look at you. You’ve all forgotten the racial differences that mean so much in my country. Here, if I look hard enough, I see beneath the gray coloration of your skin. I see Balbara features in you, Nem.” He indicated an Antok man. The man looked stunned. Dariel stared at him and then looked around at those near him, seemingly verifying from their expressions that they heard him call him by name.

  “And in you, Maris, I see Meinish blood. It’s there in the shape of your nose, in those light-colored eyes of yours.” Dariel moved on. He pointed out others, named them, and asked them to remember where they came from. They had been born in specific regions of the Known World, and yet here none of that mattered. The Auldek had not cared, and so the Lothan Aklun had ignored those differences as they sorted them into clan groups. The Lothan Aklun gave them different characteristics, ones shaped by Auldek fantasies.

  “And now,” Dariel said, “you’ve forgotten what you learned. The race you were born into doesn’t matter. To you it doesn’t matter if you’re Bethuni or Candovian, Meinish or Talayan or Senivalian. It doesn’t matter if your skin is black or brown or pale as milk. You’ve left those things behind, because you all came here united in bondage. Why should the clan you’ve been sorted into matter? It doesn’t. Dukish wants you to think it does. He wants to teach you to fear one another. He doesn’t say those words. He doesn’t even know it himself. He says Anets are strong. That they should rule. Antoks can share Ushen Brae with them, take control, and have status. But why does any of that convince you? Because of fear. The moment you begin to consider having more than someone else, you begin to fear you might end up with less than someone else. That’s the trick of the mind that Dukish has worked on you.”

  “Lies,” a voice mumbled. Dariel knew whose it was. He had heard that voice in his dreams. “All lies.”

  “Dukish, I wish you no ill.” Dariel had to wait as several people stepped out of the line of sight between him and the Anet leader. “I wish you no ill, but you have put Ushen Brae in danger. The war you have waged against the other clans and the deals you have worked out with the league are crimes that will keep the people in bondage. If you do not stop—”

  “Who are you to talk?” Dukish said. He did not rise, but his voice was strong and his gaze, fixed finally on Dariel, shot hatred at him. “A prince!” He spit the words. “Do you know what a prince is? The child of a man. One who has done nothing and yet enslaves the world and is too much a coward to admit it. A prince!”

  Dariel fingered the horn in his grasp. He held i
t still, but did not raise it. “Dukish, the league does not wish you well. They want us all weak. They want to elevate one of us above another only because it’s easier to then exploit us all. That’s what they have always done. They will use Ushen Brae now as much as they ever have. More, perhaps, because you’ll be victims no longer. You’ll be part of it with them. The league promises you fertile slaves. They want to sell them to you. They want you to become slavers. I can offer you something better. When we have sent the league from Ushen Brae I will call upon my country to bring you settlers. Think of that. Husbands and wives who will come here of their own accord, who want to make a place for themselves in this land. Why wouldn’t they? I’ve seen Ushen Brae. It’s beautiful. It’s a continent that cries out for souls to live in it again, to fill its ancient cities, and to work the—”

  “Lies!” Dukish shouted. He pushed up so fast his chair tipped over and crashed behind him. He was a short man, stout around the chest, menacing as he pushed closer. “Only the league knows how to make us fertile again. Sire Lethel can undo what the Lothan Aklun did to us. You cannot; can you?”

  Before Dariel could respond, Anira did. “Yes. He has done it already.”

  Dariel stared at her.

  She walked toward him and took the horn before she continued speaking. “I … Dariel, I didn’t plan to tell you like this. I told you once that the Sky Watcher showed me a vision of the future and of the role I could play in it. He did not claim it was the future that would be, but just that it could be.”

  A small flock of raucous birds swept through the chamber, skimming the roof and squawking the whole time. Anira watched them until they slipped into the shadows and disappeared.

  When she stayed silent, Dariel prompted, “And?”

  She looked around, speaking to everyone. “In all the years that there have been quota children in Ushen Brae not one has ever grown into a mother or a father. This was the curse for us.”

  “We know this!” Dukish said.

  “We wanted the trade to end, but if it did, we knew we would end,” Anira continued. “The Free People, I mean. Our ways. The things we made despite our captivity. Eventually, we would age and die. Our freedom, if we ever won it, would be the beginning of our end. That was what I always believed. I think that we all did. Now”—she turned and looked at Dariel—“I know differently. Because of you, Dariel Akaran. Because of you and me, and because of what we are creating.”

  Dariel knew, at some level, that she was not talking about the pact between the clans and the fight against the league, but it was not until she slid one of her hands across her abdomen that the clouds blew completely away and the realization of what she was saying stood there clear as day. Clear as a palm pressed lovingly against a woman’s abdomen.

  “It’s early days,” Anira said, “but there is life within me. I know it. I can feel it. The Sky Watcher Nâ Gâmen told me it could be so, and it is. I’m sorry for not telling you, Dariel, but Nâ Gâmen told me this could be my destiny. I have your child in me.”

  The entire chamber erupted. Dukish cursed it all as a fraud. It was all planned, he said. A lie. He knew it to be a lie. He had proof. It was hard to know if anyone heard him, for people from all the clans pushed in close to Anira. Some of them touched her belly. Others looked her in the face and searched for the truth. Others shouted the joy of it, and still others called foul. Tunnel, trying to protect her, got into a shoving match with several Antoks. Had they weapons, there would have been slaughter.

  And if Mór had not clasped her hand over Anira’s and raised the horn high, the place might have descended into chaos. “Calm! Show calm!” Mór shouted. “Do you really want to learn of life and respond with chaos? Free People, step away! Back!”

  It took her some time, but the crowd did draw slowly back. Mór’s voice grew calmer as she gained more control of them. “See? The leaguemen want to sell us something that can be freely given. There is nothing more to it than joining with Dariel’s people. We have a future! A free future. All we need do is embrace it.”

  Hearing the buzz of enthusiasm this met with, Dukish shouted to be heard. “No! No, no, no! He is the one who sold us. His people. Now the league has freed us, and he wants us to be slaves again. I can prove it.” He lifted his chin and projected his voice over the crowd. “Bring the prisoners!”

  For a moment there was confusion, shouted words and questions, a murmuring throughout the entire chamber. Mór demanded to know what was happening, but Dukish, looking smug, ignored her and repeated his order.

  People turned as a group of Antoks strode down one of the open corridors. They shoved and cursed as they did, making room. There in the center of them, four figures, weighted by chains. In all the commotion Dariel could not make out their faces until their escorts deposited them in the center of the lighted square. The brawny guards drained away, leaving the four prisoners standing, dejected, frightened, in the center of the gathering.

  Dariel recognized them. He blinked, unsure if he could trust his eyes, still stunned by Anira’s revelation. “Melio. Clytus. Geena …”

  As he said their names, their eyes found him. They stared, each of them looking at him and none of them recognizing him. How different he must look! One of the quota slaves among others like him. He tried to move toward them, but Dukish’s men blocked him.

  “These prisoners were caught trying to enter Avina,” Dukish said. “My brothers the Antoks captured them, and together we got the truth from them. They came looking for Dariel Akaran. They came as spies planning to take over this land.”

  “No,” Dariel said.

  “They want to make us slaves again. They don’t like that the league is willing to partner with us. That’s why this man is here trying to trick you. I don’t know how he does it. Some trick of the Lothan Aklun. All to keep us passive as they tighten their chains around us again.”

  “No,” Dariel said.

  “No?” Dukish asked. “I have their written confessions—signed by them!”

  Dariel tried to shove his way toward the prisoners, but Dukish’s men beat him back. “They would never confess to that because it isn’t true. Clytus, tell them the truth.”

  The man stared all the harder at the mention of his name, but he did not respond. Dariel realized he had been speaking Auldek. He switched to Acacian. “Clytus, it’s me, Dariel.”

  “Spratling?”

  “Yes, it’s me! Don’t worry. You’ll be free in a moment. I promise it.”

  Dukish ignored him. He droned on, building his case on a foundation of lies. Dariel grasped for the horn. Mór released it and Dariel held it high. He jumped with it, shouting until people acknowledged him and Dukish began to lose their attention.

  “These people are my friends,” Dariel admitted. “But if they came here, it was to find me, not to harm you in any way. Don’t let Dukish speak for them. He cannot be trusted. Nothing he has said here today has been true.”

  Dukish cursed him.

  “You know in your heart that’s not true. You told me so. You told me the truth of yourself.”

  “Never.”

  “You told me of the way you coveted your master’s wealth.”

  Dukish moved nearer. People cleared away from in front of him. “I never did!”

  “I don’t want to have to say this, but I need you to speak truthfully. I spoke with Dukish as I spoke with all of you. You all know that’s true. As you told me secrets, so did he. I know your hearts, and I do not judge you by what’s in them.”

  “Liar!”

  Dariel said, “Dukish has secrets from you all.”

  “No!”

  “Of course he does. There were things done to him that—”

  “No!”

  Dariel punched the air with the hand that held the curl of iron. “I hold the horn,” he snapped at Dukish. “Be quiet while I speak! Things were done to him that should not have been. You know of what I speak, don’t you?”

  Dukish started to say something, b
ut Tunnel moved on him as if he would hit him if he spoke. Other Anets shouldered closer. They jostled Dukish and in the confusion he almost lost his footing.

  Dariel continued. “Think, Dukish, about the things you confessed to me.” He looked the Anet leader in the eyes. He really did not want to say what he was about to. It was cruel. It would hurt. It did not seem fair to break the man’s confidence so publicly.

  He could say that Dukish’s master had raped him since his earliest days in Avina. He used him on a balcony overlooking the skyline of Avina. He set his head and shoulders out over the railing, and took pleasure in Dukish’s fear that he might thrust him over the edge to his death at any moment. He could say just what Dukish had—that it was there, looking out over the city as his master used him that he learned fear and hate and that he first dreamed of the things he would do to others if only he had the power. He was not born an evil man, Dariel could say. He was born weak, petty, scared. That is why he’s done the things he has here. Not because he is strong, but because he is weak. I’m sorry, Dukish, to say that about you. I take no joy in it.

  He could say all those things and everyone would know that they were true. But he could not be that cruel. Instead, he said, “Admit to me that you know I hold your truth within me. Just do that and I will say no more about it, now or ever.”

  “You can say whatever you want,” Dukish said. He pushed closer to Dariel. He stood just before him now. “Nobody will remember. I’ll make sure of it.”

  His hand suddenly clenched a knife. He was so close and people packed so tightly around them that Dukish had only to thrust the knife forward. It sank into Dariel’s gut before he could say or do anything. He could only manage a gasp, so overwhelming was the pain. Dukish held him on his knife blade, his face a rictus of hatred that Dariel stared into for a moment. Then the world turned black.